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Collaborating with a Highly Distributed Team Being distributed can cause challenges for team collaboration, such as insufficient communication and a lack of visibility. However, advancements in tools, technology, and best practices have helped to lessen some of those challenges. Here are four ways to make collaborating with distributed teams more seamless. |
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Don’t Ask for Permission or Forgiveness—Use an Agile Alternative Some teams get around bottlenecks by taking a “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach. This may be expedient, but it doesn’t provide a path to changing the organizational dynamic, and it can lead to wrong decisions when wider input is advisable. A more agile way is to take an “I intend to” approach. |
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When Customers Attack: Dealing with Rude Clients It seems like the only way some customers know how to communicate is to accuse, complain, and verbally attack. This only gets worse if there are delays. But when you do your best to build trust with customers early on, they are more likely to accept explanations about setbacks, even if they don’t fully understand them. |
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Is Your Culture about Responsibility or Blame? When things go wrong, it can be helpful to understand what happened and who was involved. However, all too often organizations (and the managers within) confuse responsibility with assigning blame. The former is essential for improvement. The latter works against an effective, collaborative, productive culture. |
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Beware of Success Stories The tendency to look back and think you know what contributed to a success is called survivorship bias. It occurs when you make a decision or take some action based on past successes while ignoring past failures. That's why it's important to approach reports of successful projects with a healthy dose of skepticism. |
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Superior Leaders Ask the Tough Questions Inspiring quotes can be motivating, but there's more to good leadership. New leaders may feel compelled to find clever and memorable things to say, when in reality, they should probably focus less on what they’re saying and more on what they’re hearing. The best leaders ask good questions and listen to the answers. |
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Coaching Senior Management to Be Agile Embracing an agile mindset isn’t always easy, and it can be especially difficult for senior managers who spent most of their careers working in more traditional development methodologies. By trying to speak the same language and demonstrating successful self-organization, teams can help senior management become agile. |
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Rethinking Your Measurement and Metrics for Agile and DevOps In their transition to agile and DevOps, many teams forget they also need to update their measurement and metrics plan. Some measurements and metrics from the traditional waterfall software development lifecycle may remain useful, but many may not provide value—and some may even adversely impact progress toward goals. |
